Vielklang News

Users about vielklang

09.12.2010

Vielklang is the audio toolbox that I'd hoped the other harmony generating plugins would be. The ability to edit and export MIDI is huge. Additionally, I'm so impressed by how intelligent Vielklang is at recognizing exactly what melodic content is input. It is an indispensable production tool for me.

Peter Malick

09.12.2010

Vielklang is the most simple and efficient harmonizer I have used so far, congratulations, guys.

Stephane Vigie, composer and producer

09.12.2010

In my day to day production work, I have my standard tool box of favorite EQs, Compressors, and VIs. Then there's my Secret Tool Box ... Vielklang is on top of that tool box.

Peter Malick

General

Can I run a my copy of vielklang 2 on two separate machines?

Yes, the license allows you to install and unlock it on up to two computers. On both you can use all plugin formats (VST, RTAS, AU), as you wish.

How does the unlocking work?

vielklang 2 has been shipped to you with a unique serial number. After you entered this serial number in the software, you will have register and unlock the software. To register your software, please create a new user account. To do so, please follow the register your product link in the menu. In your user area, you will find instruction on how to generate your personal unlock key. You will also find the latest full version downloads for vielklang 2 there.

How do I upgrade from vielklang 1 or vielklang 2 LE?

All vielklang 1 users get the vielklang 2 LE license for free. Simply install the full version of vielklang 2 from the download section of the user area and it will unlock as vielklang 2 LE. For upgrading you need to buy an upgrade serial number. In order to use an upgrade key you need an existing registration of vielklang 1 or vielklang 2 LE. Beside the registration info in the myAccount area you´ll find an upgrade button. Click on it and fill in your upgrade serial number. Your current registration is changed to the new product with a different serial and unlock combination. Please enter this new combination in vielklang 2 to unlock the new features. After entering the serial number and unlock code, close and reload your project in your host.

Is the web shop secure to use?

Yes it is. We do the transaction through shareit (www.shareit.com), utilizing a security certificate was issued by VeriSign Inc. The server supports SSL Version 3 and 168/112-Bit Triple DES encryption. All online shoppers who nonetheless feel uncomfortable using their credit cards online can also order using the fax form at the end of the order page.

What are the .zpa-files that are generated by vielklang 2?

vielklang 2 has to analyze the audio on loading a wave to know the pitches, note lengths, key, etc. To be able to skip this analysis process when a file is repeatedly loaded, vielklang 2 stores the analysis results in a file with the extension .zpa. This file does not contain any project data, so if you accidentally delete it, it is just the analysis process when loading the wave file that has to be done again.

What are the pitch correction options with vielklang 2?

You can pitch shift each note separately by grabbing it in the middle and moving it up and down. While holding ALT you can fine tune the note. A right click on a note or selection automatically tunes the notes to the quantized pitch. Furthermore, vielklang 2 offers two controls for each voice individually: Tune and Drift. The Tune fader corrects the mean pitch frequency while leaving the intentional deviations like vibrato untouched. The Drift fader does exactly the opposite: it allows to decrease or increase the amount of deviations from the mean pitch frequency (like changing the amount of vibrato), while leaving the mean pitch frequency itself untouched.

What does vielklang 2 mean?

vielklang 2 (pronounce "feelklung") is a german word: translated to english it would mean something like multi-sound or many-sound. In german, it could be used for a sound or chord with multiple voices.

Where is the difference between vielklang 2 and harmonizers that are known?

Many traditional harmonizers call themselves intelligent, meaning that the user is able to configure the input key and set diatonic intervals at which the additional voices will be synthesized. By "intelligence" is usually meant that diatonic intervals (i.e. only pitches from the key/scale) are used in contrast to chromatic intervals (i.e. a constant offset in semitones). This behavior is modeled by vielklang 2 "parallel" harmonization mode, but the really interesting part of vielklang 2 is the default ("intelligent") mode: here, vielklang 2 doesn't synthesize plain parallel voices, but thinks in harmony progressions, resulting in a much more musically meaningful result. Furthermore, the voicing is controlled by voice leading rules to make the result as natural sounding as possible.

Can I only harmonize vocals?

No, you can harmonize any monophonic audio melody you like. You can also import MIDI files to harmonize your MIDI melodies.

Why is vielklang 2 not a real-time effect?

There are several reasons why vielklang 2 cannot be realtime:

Harmony Estimation and Voice Leading is theoretically not possible in realtime. Think of 4 singers that try to sing a four-voice choir, but only one voice knows its melody, the others do not have any clue. How should they know what harmony is intended without knowing anything about the melody, not even the key? There are harmonizers around that do have a realtime approach, where the user has to adjust the input key, and the voices run then parallel (in diatonic intervals) to the input voice. Alternatively, the user may play all single pitches in realtime on a keyboard (knowing what harmony will fit and about a pleasant sounding voice leading). This is indeed pretty neat, but either the user exactly knows what he is doing musically or it will be the just parallel voices, which isn't very musically. So, what we intend to do is trying to implement the musical knowledge and experience and come up with nice harmonizations even for unexperienced users. But for this, we have to know the complete melody line.

Adding the possibility of triggering. Using the snapshot trigger, you may use our instrument as a neat 4-voiced sample player, with all its implications. This allows a lot of new possible use cases in a production environment that wouldn't simply be possible with a real-time plugin.

Adding the possibility of editing. Now all the harmonization and voice leading stuff might be cool, but probably cannot be correct in every single case (in the end, the plugin tries to guess what the user wants, so we would be living in a boring world if that would be always right 8-) ). So you may want to change harmony, range, and single pitches. In a realtime plugin, this is not possible. Of course, there are workarounds for this, like recording a track and edit it afterwards, but this is automatically non-realtime, and usually a pita. So why bother with a non-realtime implementation in a realtime plugin if you can make it easier and better in non-realtime at the first place?

Sonic Quality. The input pitch is shifted a considerable amount of pitches to generate the additional three voices. If something was wrong at the frequency detection or note segmentation stage, this would have severe impact on the quality. While high quality formant preserving pitch shifting basically would be possible in realtime, it gets quite difficult to guess note on/off positions correctly in realtime. These note on/off detections are quite important for harmony estimation and voice leading, and the quality benefits quite a bit from a non-realtime algorithm.

HowTo

How can I change single harmonies of the harmonization?

In the Intelligent Harmonization mode, you may just select the fitting harmony in the harmony bar right above the piano roll display. And at any time you can shift the single notes to the position you prefer.

What can I do with those Snapshots?

Snapshots enable you to store and reload the whole harmonization or just parts of it. Each snapshot can have its own distinct MIDI trigger note, allowing to play different harmonizations or different play regions on different triggers.

Troubleshooting

I cannot find the documentation. Is there any?

Yes, the manual is installed by the installer unless you unselected it during the installation process. On MAC you can find the manual in the Applications folder in the sub directory zplane. On Windows the manual is in the Start Menu in the sub directory zplane. Alternatively, use the manual menu entry in the help menu of vielklang 2. This will download the latest version of the manual.

After successful installation, vielklang 2 does not show up in the effects menu of my host. Why?

Note that vk2 is a virtual instrument, not a real-time effect, so you have to look under the instruments menu of your host. If you still cannot see the plugin try one of the following:

On Windows check if the plug-in search path in your host points to the directory where you installed vielklang 2.

Do a rescan of your plug-ins and delete any potential blacklists before. Please check the host documentation on how to do this.

On Windows please check if you installed the 32bit version in case you run a 32bit host or if you installed the 64bit version if you run a 64bit host.

On Windows please make sure that you installed the MS VC2005 Redistributables that are included in the installer package.

I cannot drag and drop in Logic

Unfortunately Logic doesn't support drag and drop from the arranger. You can drag and drop from the audio bin (project browser in Logic X) though.

Freezing does not work.

TIn order to freeze an instrument properly the host needs to know at what time the instrument produces audio output. Usually this is done by checking where the instrument has MIDI input. So, in order to freeze a vk2 track you need to generate a dummy MIDI part for whole time where vk2 is supposed to produce audio output. In some host it is sufficient just to generate an empty MIDI part, in others you might need to add a dummy note ranging from the beginning to the end of the MIDI part.

Why is the input melody automatically modified?

YVk2 does this automatically because the input pitch was not in the harmonization scale, and it has assumed that for proper harmonization, it should be quantized to that scale. You have the option to switch this automatic behavior off by disabling the small magnet icon in the scale selector in the harmony settings. If this option is turned off, the input melody pitches will remain unaltered.

Why is there no MIDI-output with vielklang 2 AU?

Due to technical limitations of the AudioUnit-Interface, vielklang 2 AU is not able to provide MIDI-output. MIDI-out is available with the VST-format.